Indestructible
'' Indestructible'' is the fourth studio album by American rock band Disturbed. A self-produced effort,[1] Indestructible is the first Disturbed album that did not feature Johnny K, the producer of Disturbed's previous three albums, The Sickness, Believe, and Ten Thousand Fists. Indestructible was recorded at Groovemaster Studios in Chicago, Illinois.[2] The album features two songs, "Perfect Insanity" and "Divide",[2][3] that were written by Disturbed prior to their first album, The Sickness, but were never previously released. The album features significantly darker themes than any of Disturbed's previous work, according to the band. Some of the lyrical themes involve actual experiences that vocalist David Draiman had endured over the course of the past few years prior to making the album, including "bad relationships",[4] a motorcycle accident that he was involved with, and an incident of suicide. To match the aggressive attitude and nature of said themes, Draiman told the other band members to create darker, more textural music than they have before. Despite these themes, the title track, "Indestructible", is meant to encourage soldiers that are fighting in wars and boost their morale.[4] Indestructible was released on June 3, 2008 in Compact Disc format, and also as two different limited edition and special edition digipaks[5], debuting at number-one on the Billboard 200, making it the third consecutive number-one debut by Disturbed on that chart, which had only been achieved by five other rock bands prior to the album's release.[6] The album also shipped over 253,000 units in its opening week.[7] Indestructible was met with mixed reviews by critics, earning a score of 57% on review-aggregating website Metacritic, based on six reviews[8]. The album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in April 2009 for shipping over 1,000,000 copies in the United States. The single "Inside the Fire" was nominated for a 2009 Grammy Award in the "Best Hard Rock Performance" category.[9] Recording and production After touring in support of the band's previous album, Ten Thousand Fists, the band took a break. During this time, drummer Mike Wengren got married, and guitarist Dan Donegan had a child. After the break, the band went to Groovemaster Studios in Chicago, Illinois and began writing music. Indestructible is Disturbed's first self-produced effort, without Johnny K acting as producer, as he did on the band's previous albums, The Sickness, Believe, and Ten Thousand Fists.[2] The band was comfortable with self-producing, despite having Johnny K produce two consecutive number-one albums, and this being their first time without him. As vocalist David Draiman reasoned, "we learned it, and we'd like to try self-producing."[2] Early in the writing process, Donegan created guitar riffs. The rest of the band then listened to the riffs, and wrote the rest of the music, with the riffs being the base. As Donegan commented, "The writing process is ... pretty much the same since the beginning ... of this band. It's always been riffs; something musically that I'll come up with begins the writing process."[2] Wengren commented, "We're always tossing around riffs and beats, but it isn't really until we get home and we are able to clear our minds, decompress for a little bit, and then hit it, especially Danny and I, and just start throwing the riffs and the beats out, that the music starts to finally come to life."[2] Bassist John Moyer left the studio during the recording process, due to his wife being pregnant. Donegan and Wengren sent him demos through e-mail, and he continued to write bass lines for the songs from his home studio. Regarding electronics on the album, Donegan said, "When the basic guitar, bass, and drums were being laid down, at first I didn't really see a whole lot of room for some of the electronics, but as the songs were starting to develop, I was just in that frame of mind to try and toy around with some of the electronics."[2] When the instrumentation was completed, Draiman began to write melody lines for each song.[2] Draiman commented, "I'm a big believer in the vibe of the music and the feel of it, how the song makes you feel musically should dictate what it is to be about and so if you start with something that has meaning, but the music doesn't support the meaning, then what good is it?"[2] The first song completed musically was "The Night", and Draiman completed the melody line in three days. This caused Draiman to tentatively call the record The Night.[2] As Draiman recalled, "The instrumentation was so cool and so dark and textural that I right away kind of jumped into it."[2] When the first batch of songs were completed, the band sent them out to their record label, Reprise Records, and waited for their approval to continue writing more songs. After they received approval, they wrote the rest of the songs featured on the album.[2] |- | class="mbox-text" colspan="2" style="line-height: 1.1em"|''Problems listening to this file? See media help.'' |} Wengren commented, "We thought it would be pretty cool, especially for the fans, if we brought back maybe a song or two, that were actually written during the same period that The Sickness songs were written. Danny brought in some old demo tapes, I'm talking twelve years old, back when 'Down With the Sickness' and 'Stupify' [sic], and all that stuff was written, this was actually written before that."[2] The songs that Wengren was referring to were "Perfect Insanity",[3] and "Divide".[2] The band also recorded a version of the song "Midlife Crisis", which was originally performed by Faith No More. Draiman comments, "We took the song, revamped it and modernized it to our current level, and the version’s killer."[4] However, the song did not make it into the final track listing of the album,[2] and is instead featured on Covered, A Revolution in Sound.[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indestructible_(Disturbed_album)&action=edit&section=2 edit Titling the record Indestructible took the longest amount of time to title when compared to Disturbed's previous records, according to Wengren. The band had originally wanted to title the record The Night, because it was the first track to be completed, and it defined the musical direction the band wanted to use with Indestructible. The record had a song whose working title was "Defend", but it eventually was re-titled "Indestructible". When the title was changed, the band felt the title had, as Donegan reasoned, "made a bigger statement".[2] Draiman said they titled the record Indestructible because the title "... kind of symbolizes the fact that we're still fucking here, that we haven't been destroyed, that we withstood the test of time."[2] Regarding the choice of the title, Moyer commented, "Usually there's some name or phrase that sort of sums up, you know, what the vibe of the record's about, so this one's Indestructible, and it is an aggressive record, this record's about kicking ass."[2] Donegan, commenting on the meaning of the title, stated, "We feel that we've become indestructible to be able to survive this long in the business, and continuing a success with it."[2] Draiman concluded, "We have been through a lot. No matter what gets thrown at us, as a band, no matter what happens in the musical environment, we're still here, we're still viable, and still standing."[2] Songs Indestructible Inside The Fire Deceiver The Night Perfect Insanity Haunted Enough The Curse Torn Criminal Divide Facade